June 22, 2010

A Guest Post by KEN

Women. Too emotional? Irrational? Reactionary?

I can only speak from my own personal experience. And that experience tells me that the answer is a resounding, emphatic, delivered-while-jumping-up-and-down-and-waving-my-arms “Yes!”

There may be one or two exceptions in my chequered past. But for the most part, they’re all the same. If I’m a few minutes late coming home, I get a crazed call screaming, “Who is she?” If I can’t make her Dad’s birthday party because of a business trip, she insists I hate her parents and want them dead. If I fall asleep during the chick flick we’re watching, I’m not sensitive to her feelings.

I’ve had girlfriends break down in tears because I was too slow to notice a new haircut. One who threatened to punch out a female ticket-taker at the local movie house because she thought she was “making a play for my guy.” Another who stopped talking to her best friend for three years because she was convinced the girl wore the same dress as her to a wedding out of spite.

Again, I can only base this on the women I know. And with my predilections and obtuse desires (which I give far too much screen-time to at my blog, Lustmongers), it could very well be that the women I know represent a small demographic. But in my experience, if there’s a conclusion to be jumped to, a handle to be flown off, or a boyfriend to be kicked in the balls based purely on suspicion and nothing resembling hardcore facts, women are gonna do it.

But, in fairness, I can honestly say that most guys I know – including myself – are pretty much the same. In fact, I’d say that a lot of my buds are far more emotional and reactionary than the women I know. This is especially evident when it comes to relationships. I’ve known some jealous women in my time, but those women got nothin’ on us guys. In fact, jealousy is the one emotion men do particularly well.

A good example of this is my pal Owen. Owen has never trusted a single woman he’s dated. In fact, whenever these women are out of his sight, he organizes groups of buddies to pull some undercover work and follow her at various check-points throughout the city. And as a guy once assigned to the “Beacon to Newbury Street” beat, I can tell you that I’m not exaggerating. God as my witness, I even saw Owen don a fake beard to follow a former girlfriend on the subway to make sure she really was going to a cousin’s birthday party as she claimed.

Though his motives can be questioned, I totally sympathize with Owen. There’s a reason most guys wanna make like Spider-Man and slap a tracer on their girlfriends’ backs whenever said ladies — particularly in packs — are hitting the town. And that reason is that we, as men, hit the town. And we know what we do when we hit the town, and that is mentally undress everything with breasts and a heartbeat that happens within our field of vision. After a few beers, it only gets worse, as we start imagining what it would be like to 69 the hat-rack in the corner of the bar.

Actually, I’m only half-joking. But the bottom line is that when guys head out on the town, the punch list of activities usually looks something like this:
1) Look at women.
2) Consume massive quantities of alcohol.
3) Shift from “Looking at” to “Interacting With” mode.
4) Attempt to sell women on the virtues of letting us in their trousers.
5) Absorb slap, continue drinking, continue ogling.
6) Repeat until arrested, broke, shot, etc.

You get the point. Guys go out because that’s where the women are. So when our ladies tell us that they’re going out, we figure that unless they’re heading to “2-for-1 dyke night” at the local Pizza Hut, they will most likely be in some establishment where there will be men for them to look at, and men looking back at them. And this bothers us to no end.

For inexplicable chromosomal reasons, women seem perfectly capable of going out with their friends, having some drinks, dancing and flirting innocently, and actually heading back home without the need to blow the bartender. Guys have never been able to get our arms around this concept, and the amount of suspicion our bodies can hold is usually directly proportionate to the amount of guilt we’re carrying.

But it’s always been this way. We’re all emotional, irrational and reactionary, but we make each other that way. And so long as we all love fucking, spooning, snogging, dry-humping, six-hour make-out sessions, slow dances at the corner bar and pressing each other against alley walls in a dull haze of sweat and booze, that’s just the way it’s going to be.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a fake beard to put on, and a girlfriend to follow through downtown Boston.

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